Characters / Warhammer 40,000: Forces of Chaos

Warhammer 40,000 Main Character Index
Imperium of Man: Founders, The Primarchs, Adeptus Astartes (First Founding Chapters, Other Chapters, Characters, Primaris Marines), Astra Militarum, Adepta Sororitas, Inquisition, Mechanicus, Other factions
Forces of Chaos: Chaos Gods, Chaos Primarchs, Chaos Marines
Xeno Races: Aeldari (Asuryani, Drukhari) | Leagues of Votann | Necrons | Orks (Characters) | T'au Empire | Tyranids (Genestealer Cults)

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Clockwise from top left: the symbols of Tzeentch, Khorne, Slaanesh and Nurgle. The eight-pointed star is the symbol of Chaos Undivided.

This is our galaxy. Ours to corrupt, ours to enslave. The gods will not be denied their prize.

—Xereth, Sorcerer of the Black Legion

In Warhammer 40,000, the Immaterium, or Warp, is a parallel dimension where the thoughts, desires, and emotions of sentient creatures are made manifest in the form of psychic entities labeled Daemons. There was a time in the distant past when the Warp was a calm and even benign place, but the galaxy's millennia-long decay into its current state of constant warfare has corrupted it into a twisted mirror that accentuates the negative - the gods of Bravery, Hope, Acceptance, and Love are also the gods of Rage, Mutation, Decay, and Hedonism. The Warp is a realm of primordial Chaos, where the laws of nature and causality do not apply, where dark thoughts congeal and evolve into diabolical gods. It is a nightmare realm that occasionally spills forth into the Materium, leaving behind madness and desolation.

Humanity has an intimate relationship with Chaos - after all, their minds feed it. The Warp from which Chaos springs is the source of (much of) the mutation that wracks the Imperium, from inhuman monstrosities to the psychically-gifted Navigators. The Warp is the key to interstellar travel, as ships traveling through the Warp move much faster than they would in a rational universe, assuming they are not lost to the storms and eddies of the Empyrean or devoured by daemons. The Warp is also the only efficient way to communicate faster than light. And among humans, there are always those who turn to Chaos for various reasons: bored nobles looking for a new thrill by dabbling in the occult, radical daemonhunters hoping to turn the weapons of the enemy against him, ambitious individuals making dark pacts in exchange for power, cults and cabals plotting to turn their homeworlds over to the dark gods, bitter souls and traitors seeking revenge, or ignorant fools who don't even know the names of the gods they worship. Regardless of their motivations, very few of them end up as anything more than Unwitting Pawns to the dark gods' plans, and horrific death is an all too common fate. Even those who manage to draw the attention of one or more of the Chaos gods may be turned into monstrous abominations called Chaos Spawn, twisted and mutated by their "blessings" and driven insane. Those that don't suffer these fates, however... they can go far, becoming immortal and inhumanly powerful Daemon Princes.

Collectively, these followers are known as the Lost and the Damned: faithless traitors who have abandoned their humanity and forfeited their souls. Entire regiments of the Imperial Guard and whole Naval fleets have gone renegade, while disaffected mutants and abhumans sometimes turn to Chaos as well. But by far the worst Chaos threats are the Daemons themselves, and the heirs to a betrayal ten thousand years old that almost destroyed the human race...

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TROPES FOR THE TROPE GOD! EXAMPLES FOR THE EXAMPLE THRONE!

General Chaos Tropes

• Ailment-Induced Cruelty: Inverted by worshipers of Nurgle. They are ravaged with diseases and pestilence, but they view their afflictions as gifts from Nurgle that show his favor to them, and those that aren't insensate zombies are usually jovial and friendly and want nothing more than to share Nurgle's love to everyone around them...which just ends up spreading the diseases they're infected with.
• Alien Geometries: Chaos is unbound by the laws of the material universe, and those objects and locations corrupted or created by it often have impossible geometries and dimensions that will make a mortal ill, or send them mad, just by looking at them.
• Arch-Enemy: The Imperium actually calls Chaos the "Arch Enemy" or the "Great Enemy".
• Ax-Crazy: Anyone who falls under the sway of Chaos becomes a bloodthirsty maniac all too willing to serve their unholy patrons through gratuitous torture and murder. Those that haven’t seemingly devolved into violent madmen have either gotten good at hiding it or will eventually become one as the taint of the Dark Gods erodes their minds.
• Artifact of Death: The vast majority of Chaos tainted items will invariably lead to the death of any normal mortals who come into contact with them. The most powerful Chaos artefacts will also consume the soul of their unfortunate victim.
• As Long as There Is Evil: The only way to truly defeat Chaos would be to destroy all the intelligent life that feeds it. The Necrons and Tyranids would like to make that happen.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: While someone can start out dabbling with the Ruinous Powers with good intentions, it tends to gradually corrupt all but the strongest-willed, driving them into madness and horror.
• Berserk Button: Don't invoke the Emperor's name in the presence of a daemon or Chaos Space Marine. It won't end well.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: This pops up for people who fall victim to Chaos. Annihilating your soul is just one of the options available, and not even the worst at that.
• Bizarrchitecture: Common on daemon worlds, where the laws of physics are literally just another building material.
• Black Magic: As much as the Imperium would like to deny it, without the Warp it couldn't function. The Warp is the only means of faster-than-light travel available to humanity, and the Navigators that have the ability to guide vessels through the Warp can do this because of specific mutations created by human gene-tech that allows them to see it. That said, the Warp is not Chaos. Chaos is a part of the Warp, but not the only part. Neutral animals, unaligned Warp-emanations, and the force of faith can also shape the Warp. Interacting with those is simply dangerous, not suicidal.
• Blessed with Suck: Some of the mutations that the Chaos Gods gift their followers can prove detrimental to those receiving them. This has been represented in some versions of the game, such as the random 'Rewards' tables from 1st Edition that could result in characteristic penalties instead of bonuses, or the 'Eye of the Gods' table from a number of editions that could result in a character "rewarded" by being turned into a mindless Chaos Spawn.
• Brown Note: Common side effects of looking at Chaos symbols are mild nausea, slight bleeding, and insanity.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Anyone who's in deep with Chaos tends to wear this on their sleeve... or any other part of their body.
• Chaos Is Evil: Though technically speaking, everyone in the franchise is evil to a degree, Chaos really takes the cake. The Chaos Gods also embody positive emotions, but with the setting what it is, these rarely get displayed.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: While it's particularly prominent with anything related to Tzeentch due to its scheming, manipulative nature, Chaos in general is well known for its followers looking out for themselves before anyone else and taking any opportunity to advance themselves, regardless of who has to be crushed to make it happen.
• Colour Coded Armies: Red and brass/bronze for Khorne; blue, and to a lesser extent yellow and every other color for Tzeentch; sickly green for Nurgle; and purple and pink for Slaanesh. In addition, Malal was supposed to be black and white.
• The Corruption: Chaos causes both the gradual mental and physical destruction of anything it comes in contact with.
• The Dark Side: Which manages to be darker than what passes as the "Light" side in this setting, no mean feat.
• Deadly Gaze: Infernal Gaze, one of the Psychic Powers available to Chaos Marine Sorcerers and the Daemon Prince Be’lakor in 8th Edition, sees the caster channel the unholy power of the warp through his eyes to cause horrendous damage to anyone they cast their gaze upon.
• Deal with the Devil: Pacts with Chaos in general, and to specific Chaos Gods in particular.
• Demonic Possession: Before the opening of the Great Rift, the most common way for individual daemons to gain access to the material universe was to possess a mortal host, using them to act in the Materium for a while, often until the daemon's own power destroyed the host. Psykers are the most common and easily possessed hosts for daemons but with the right rituals, any mortal form can become a host to a daemonic entity.
• Dream Land: The Warp is an exceedingly negative version.
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Don't stand too close to anyone powered by Chaos.
• Eldritch Location:
  • Anywhere in the Eye of Terror or any place sufficiently tainted by Chaos.
  • The domains of the Chaos Gods are like this, especially the ever-changing Maze of Tzeentch.
• Eviler than Thou: Chaos is the one faction that deliberately tries to be the evilest faction in the setting, with only the Dark Eldar rivaling them.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: The presence of Warp energy usually involves the temperature dropping several degrees.
• Evil Is Hammy: In a galaxy of ham, Chaos stands out for particular scene chewing.
  Sanguinius: Are all of your kind so in love with the sound of your own voices?
• Evil Is Visceral: Very common, especially the "mismatched arrangement".
• Evil Laugh: Chaos specializes in this, as most Traitor Marines have turned batshit insane over ten thousand years of war and slaughter and the mind-warping effects of the Immaterium. Dawn of War has Chaos Marines randomly break down and cackle occasionally. Subverted by the Iron Warriors legion who seldom laughs, considering such displays beneath them.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: No matter how often Chaos gets pushed back, every victory they do win is permanent and virtually impossible to undo. This is courtesy of their form of Hostile Terraforming, bringing part of the Warp to merge with realspace, and physics and reality no longer matter. Not even Exterminatus can cleanse a planet so claimed.
• Evil Smells Bad:
  • Chaos itself is often described as having a nauseating stench reminiscent of rotten meat or sickeningly cloying fermentation.
  • Nurgle and his daemons and followers are particularly known for being foul-smelling due to the disease and rot that they breed and live in.
• For the Evulz: Many followers of Chaos have actual hopes and ambitions, but whether they'll keep them rather than being addicted to the horrors they inflict or driven insane from the gifts of Chaos is a different story...
• Genuine Human Hide:
  • It's a popular source of clothing for Chaos followers, particularly those of Slaanesh.
  • Many a Tome of Eldritch Lore is made from it.
  • Last but not least, we at TV Tropes are contractually obligated to remind you that Chief Apothecary Fabius Bile of the Emperor's Children wears a lab coat made of human skin. ^note Okay, we're not really required to remind you. We just enjoy spreading the horror.
• Godhood Seeker: The end goal for most, if not all, servants of Chaos is to become a Daemon Prince, a quasi-Physical God with immense physical and magical power after being ascended by one or all of the Chaos gods to wreak havoc on the galaxy for all eternity. Fortunately, the vast majority die (or worse) long before they can even get close to that goal.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: When the Old Ones were battling the Necrons and C'tan millions of years ago in the conflict known as the War in Heaven, they created several psychically-attuned sapient races such as the Eldar and Krork to assist them, as their enemies were incapable of dealing with the Warp. However, those species' emotions and beliefs resonated in the Warp and created their gods. Also, their hatred, pain and suffering as a result of the War, combined with their warlike natures, corrupted the fundamental nature of the Warp, turning its once peaceful inhabitants into what we call daemons today and creating the nascent Chaos Gods. This, combined with an Enslaver plague that devastated the galaxy, either destroyed the Old Ones or forced them to flee the galaxy, leaving behind their Webway for the Eldar to exploit for their own purposes and leaving the Warp as a twisted, malevolent horror. The Eldar in turn managed to contain the situation for a full 60 million years, but when their own civilization became decadent and ultimately collapsed (spawning a new Chaos god in the process) all hell broke loose.
• Haunted Technology: Chaos is able to corrupt almost anything, even technology. Certain profane rituals and rites can bind daemonic entities to physical objects to create daemon weapons, daemon engines and even daemon Titans. Some older background material even states that it was daemonic possession of the Men of Iron that led to their rebellion.
• Hearing Voices: One of the early signs of Chaos corruption is hearing voices that will encourage the individual to do specific actions. Depending on the nature of these voices they could seem innocent or obviously evil but they will always be encouraging things that will further the individual's corruption.
• Hermetic Magic: Most warp-sorcery takes this form (usually involving Eldritch Locations, Geometric Magics, and Human Sacrifices) in contrast to Psychic Powers which are the other major way of warp-driven reality manipulation. Combining the two approaches results in Explosive Overclocking, and some psykers may turn to sorcery to further empower themselves.
• Insane Equals Violent: Generally the case with Chaos-inspired madness, though in most cases those afflicted were already violent.
• The Legions of Hell: Fed by your every thought and emotion.
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: Most mortal Chaos followers find themselves offered as human sacrifices, die in battle, succumb to mutations, or become mindless Chaos spawn. Nurgle's mortal followers are the major exception, as they have the opportunity to become Plaguebearer demons, either by contracting Nurgle's Rot or taking part in the planet-encircling dance on Bubonicus.
• Made of Evil: Warp energy is inherently corrupting, and anyone not a Space Marine or Inquisitor exposed to it on a regular basis is killed for fear of spreading corruption. Even during the Great Crusade, before the existence of the Chaos Gods was known, the Legiones Astartes had standing orders from the Emperor to subject planets with Warp-taint to Exterminatus, and the Legiones Astartes were trained to recognize and combat psykers bloated with Warp madness.
• The Mad Hatter: Occasionally seen as a symptom of corruption by Chaos, particularly by Tzeentch.
• Madness Mantra: One sign of Chaos corruption is the obsessive repetition of words and phrases. The exact form of these ravings depends on the individual and can range from nonsensical ramblings to disturbing mantras and quoting from profane religious texts.
• Make Them Rot: The Hand of Darkness is an insidious artefact saturated with the power of the Warp, causing anything touched by it to instantly decay into a puddle of putrid slime. The 6th and 7th Edition rules for the Hand represented this by allowing the wearer to make a single attack that ignored a model's Toughness and Vehicle Armour, as well as causing Instant Death.
• Malevolent Mutilation: Chaos cultists commonly mortify their flesh with carvings of symbols representing their patrons. Those practicing their faith in secret limit this to small carvings, easily covered up. Once they are operating in the open and know there is no more need to integrate themselves with Imperial society, many will start covering their entire body with such symbols as a symbol of how faithful they are.
• Mark of the Beast: Particularly devout and favoured followers of Chaos will inevitably receive the Mark of their patron somewhere on their body, often on the forehead, as a physical representation of their faith. This can be something of a mixed blessing as, while such a Mark will garner respect from other followers of the God, it is an overt symbol of their dark faith that will result in extreme and violent censure if found by Imperial authorities.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sometimes, when they really want to have fun with their once-heroic followers, the Ruinous Powers will peel away the comfortable veil of madness from before their eyes and let them see the full horror of what they've become, then force them to admit that there's nothing else they can do to make it right. During the Horus Heresy, it happened to Fulgrim, after killing Ferrus Manus and Horus, after the Emperor mortally wounded him.
• Negative Space Wedgie: Warp Rifts, tears in spacetime where the Warp and realspace gel together. The Maelstrom and Screaming Vortex are two well-known rifts, but the most infamous for most of 40K's existence was the Eye of Terror. Formed by the birth of Slaanesh, it covered nearly all of the original Eldar empire (an area of space roughly the diameter of a galactic arm), irredeemably corrupted every planet it touched, and the Eldar Craftworld Ulthwe was trapped in its gravity. It also served as a home and headquarters for the Iron Warriors, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, and Word Bearers. With the fall of Cadia and the destruction of its Necron Pylon system, a series of Warp rifts called the Cicatrix Maledictum now stretches from the Eye across the galaxy to the Hades Anomaly, dividing the Imperium in two and causing havoc throughout the galaxy.
• Power at a Price: The favour of the Ruinous Powers does not come without cost. The the Dark Gods bless their favoured followers with fantastic powers, the greater the price they have to pay—be it in sanity, physical integrity, or autonomy of mind and body.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: Most Chaos mutations gifted to its followers.
• Religion of Evil: Chaos Undivided, formed by Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, who was chastised by the Emperor for spending so much time building cathedrals rather than campaigning. In response, Lorgar began worshiping the Chaos Gods as a pantheon, and today his legion is known for being darkly devout. Chaos Undivided holds that worshiping all the Chaos Gods allows one to draw the strengths of all without any of the weaknesses (Khorne's all-out hatred, Slaaneesh's need for sensation, Nurgle's corrupting influence, and Tzeentch's mutations). The fact that Chaos Undivided's greatest champion is Abbadon makes this claim... questionable.
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: Warp rifts are the Warp made manifest in realspace, and inside them things like physics and causality generally take a long lunch break.
• Red Right Hand: Marks of Chaos.
• Satanic Archetype: Four of them. All of them rule over legions of daemons, tempt people to their cause, and want to raise hell. Each of them has a certain Satan-like trait - Khorne is all about violence and bloodshed whose daemons look the part, Nurgle is the Plaguemaster (a trait often attributed to the devil in medieval Christendom), Slaanesh encourages total following of pleasures of the flesh, and Tzeentch is the ultimate Manipulative Bastard.
• Schizo Tech: While common to the setting as a whole, the 2nd Edition Daemon World appendix army list was built around the trope. Designed to let Warhammer Fantasy players use their Chaos armies in Warhammer 40,000, the basic Daemon World army list allowed players to take armies consisting of troops equipped with medieval weapons and armour led by champions and characters armed with the more advanced weaponry of the Warhammer 40,000 universe such as Power Fists, laspistols and plasma pistols.
• Sense Loss Sadness:
  • One crafty Inquisitor figured out that the only way to effectively torture Slaaneshi cultists is to stick them in a sensory deprivation tank.
  • Any Chaos Marine entombed in a Chaos Dreadnought will eventually go insane for the same reason (reflected in the rules, even). In more recent editions, the Chaos Dreadnought has been replaced by the Hellbrute. Entombment in a Hellbrute is more tolerable to the Chaos Space Marine because they will eventually fuse with the machine, regaining sensory information.
• SkeleBot 9000: The Chaos Androids from the first two editions of the game (as well as the early Gaiden Game Space Crusade) were daemonically-possessed automatons that take the form of shining plasteel skeletons. Unfortunately they were removed from the game and background material, along with the Chaos Squats who created them.
• Space Plane: The Hell Blade fighters and Hell Talon fighter-bombers used by the Eyrine Cults of the forces of Chaos are diabolical, and sometimes daemonically possessed, aircraft that are equally capable of fulfilling their respective roles within a planet’s atmosphere and in space.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: As the Chaos Gods are constantly vying against each other to conquer the galaxy, they will only work together on those rare occasions when their goals align, and the same goes for their followers. Only a Lord with great power and influence can draw together followers from the various gods, especially those in direct opposition such as Khorne and Slaanesh, and should the Lord be slain then it will not be long before the disparate forces fall out.
• Time Dilation: Time moves differently in the Warp, both faster and slower than the rest of space. Justified because the Warp sneers at such things like "causality" and "logic".
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Many lesser followers of Chaos expect to be paid with the 'blessings' of the Chaos Gods. They usually are turned into barely-functional mutants that serve as meatshields for Daemons.
  • A number of their actions that they do also require great sacrifice to the Gods... though they're things that could've been done without bloodshed, and in some cases, technology.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Chaos Energy is this. It's inherently corrupting, and taints everything it touches. Organic bodies become twisted and mutated, bits of tech become inhabited by Daemons, planets become twisted into ruinous hellscapes and sentient races lose their minds. As such, it's extremely dangerous and any objects or rifts that produce it are typically destroyed on sight by those who know what it can do.
• Warrior Heaven:
  • The Warp. To them, though, it is heavenly, in contrast with how hellish it is for others.
  • It's also heaven for the Orks, for how much combat they can find.
    Great Boss Tuska: Told yer I knew where da best fightin' woz.

The various forces and factions of Chaos

Factions and characters with their own pages

• Chaos Gods and Daemons
• Chaos Primarchs
• Chaos Space Marines

Others

The Dark Mechanicum

During the Horus Heresy, more than half of the Tech-Priests of Mars joined with the traitor Warmaster thanks to promises of rare STC technology, as well as a relaxation on the study and development of proscribed technology. After Horus' defeat, the members of the Dark Mechanicum fled to the Eye of Terror with the rest of the Traitor forces, where they continue to create profane technology for the forces of Chaos by melding arcane machinery with beings from the warp.

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• Beware My Stinger Tail: Some Chaos Titans are equipped with long, flesh-metal tails with blades mounted on the tip that they can use to attack enemy Titans^note granting them a bonus in combat during early editions of the Epic scale game. The tails of the dreaded Banelords Titans of Khorne go even further with the addition of a battle cannon that it uses to engage vehicles and infantry at range.
• Black Speech: They are capable of conversing in Scrapcode, a corrupted version of the Lingua-technis that has somehow been fused with the essence of Chaos and is also able to act as an aggressive computer virus capable of converting a Machine Spirit to the cause of the Chaos Gods.
• Cyborg: Members of the Dark Mechanicum are just as obsessed with replacing and augmenting their bodies with cybernetics as their Imperial counterparts but their bionics are often twisted amalgamations of the technological and the arcane.
• Evil Counterpart: The Dark Mechanicum are often described as the mirror image of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum retain the technical abilities and thirst for knowledge of their loyalist counterparts but merge it with the dark forces of the warp.
• Hot Blade: Some Chaos Titans^note mostly in early editions of the Epic-scale game system are equipped with hellblades, giant powered cleavers that glow white-hot with infernal heat and can cut through an enemy Titan's armour like butter.
• Humongous Mecha: The Dark Mechanicum still maintain the Titan Legions that joined with Horus during the Heresy. These twisted god-machines are now often mutated beyond all reason with the souls of their crew bound to their Titan, if not replaced by bound daemons.
• An Ice Person: One of the upgrades for a corrupted Titan in Adeptus Titanicus is "Frozen Soul", which makes the Titan less vulnerable to heat buildup; this can be combined with "Gelid Aura" for a Titan that can run its reactor quite literally hot as hell without needing to worry much about Overheating.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Slaanesh-warped Titans can exhibit some of the disturbing grace that characterises many Slaaneshi characters at a smaller scale. Granted, with the general design of Imperial-based Humongous Mecha "impossibly graceful" could just mean "knees that visibly bend".
• Lightning Lash: Chaos energy whips are triple tailed, metallic, electrified whips fitted to Chaos Titans. They can cut down swathes of enemy infantry with a single swing, and are intended to overload the void shields of enemy titans and burn out their delicate circuitry. In early editions of the Epic game system, these weapons were able to hit multiple targets and had a chance to strip multiple shields from an enemy Titan.
• Mad Scientist: The members of the Dark Mechanicum have been freed of all the restrictions of the Adeptus Mechanicus and innovate much more than their loyalist counterparts.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: The Titan weapons known as Doomfists, from early editions of the Epic-scale game system, combined large power fists with a chainblade and a pair of melta cannons. These weapons allowed Chaos Titans to rip their opponents apart in close combat, while still being able to punch through the armour of enemy Titans at range.
• Morph Weapon: Some Titans have constantly warping weapons similar to a very, very large Obliterator. Adeptus Titanicus represents this with an upgrade called "Writhing Carapace".
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Corrupted Titans are demon-possessed Humongous Mecha. Legio Mortaxis are also infected with a techno-virus that makes them functionally zombie robots.

Daemon Engines

A Maulerfiend.

Daemon Engines are horrifying monstrosities that are a blasphemous melding of technology and warp entities. Produced by the tech-priests of the Dark Mechanicum, the daemon-smiths of the Forge of Souls deep in the Warp, or the mutating influence of Chaos brining mortal war machines to twisted life, Daemon Engines come in all shapes and sizes, from the larger than man-sized Blood Slaughterers to the Titan-sized Lords of Battle.

For Daemon Engines used exclusively by specific Chaos factions, such as the Death Guard’s Myphitic Blight-Hauler, see that faction's entry.

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• And I Must Scream: The transformation of a fighter plane into a Heldrake causes the pilot to gradually fuse with the machine itself. At first, this allows the pilot to control the fighter as if it were their own body; over time, however, the nascent daemonic sapience of the machine itself becomes dominant while the pilot regresses to a withered, atrophied husk at the Heldrake's core, shrouded in darkness and unable to do more than wail in rage and anguish within its prison.
• Ax-Crazy: Blood Slaughterer daemon engines of Khorne are possessed of an insane fury that is notable even amongst the daemonic followers of the Blood God and it will never take a backwards step while there are enemies still breathing. In-game this is represented by the "Blind Fury" rule that, in the 8th edition of the game, denies the daemon engine the option to Fall Back from combat.
• Ballistic Bone: Some Lords of Skulls are equipped with a skullhurler, a hideous weapon that fires a rain of shrieking skulls that gnaw at those they strike until nothing remains but bloody pulp. In all editions of the game, the skullhurler is capable of doing a massive amount of hits due to the sheer number of skulls it fires at the enemy.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Brass Scorpions mount a rapid fire scorpion cannon at the end of their tails capable of unleashing a hail of bullets to shred their enemies.
• Bloody Murder: Cauldrons of Blood^note from early editions of the Epic scale rules are daemon engines of Khorne that are equipped with great cannons that spew the burning, poisonous blood of daemons at their enemies. This red-hot ichor can burn through almost anything and flows over and around any cover that the victim is sheltering behind.
• Breath Weapon: As part of their mechanical daemon dragon theme, Heldrakes mount baleflamers in their mouths, enabling them to incinerate their enemies with daemonic flame as they pass over them. Some Forgefiends also have a mouth that doubles as an ectoplasma cannon.
• Chest Blaster: The mighty Lords of Skulls typically mount a ranged weapon in the chest or abdominal area of their torso. These weapons, such as the Ichor or Gorestorm Cannons, tend to fire boiling and/or poisonous blood at the enemy in a number of different methods.
• Combat Tentacles: Some Maulerfiends are equipped with lasher tendrils, darting metal tentacles that attack anything that comes within reach. In the 8th Edition of the game, these razor-sharp tendrils give the Maulerfiend a large number of extra attacks.
• Epic Flail: Defilers equipped for close combat often have a Defiler scourge attacked to their torso. This mass of metal tendrils, each tipped with heavy spiked balls, allows the Defiler to smash its opponents to pulp. In the 8th Edition rules, the multiple tendrils that make up the defiler scourge give the daemon engine extra attacks in close combat.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Doom Wing and Fire Lord Daemon Engines of Tzeentch^note from early editions of the Epic-scale game system are armed with large flame cannons similar to those typically mounted on Knights and small Titans that they use to strafe enemy infantry.
• Giant Spider: Venomcrawlers resemble titanic mechanical spiders with fleshy, toothy jaws, metallic tentacles beneath their heads and flamethrowers mounted onto their raised abdomens.
• Haunted Technology: Daemon engines are metal monstrosities created by binding a daemon of Chaos into a mechanical shell. Such creations are far more powerful than the constituent daemon or vehicle but are incredibly difficult to control and must be bound with arcane rituals.
• Healing Factor:
  • Daemon engines are saturated with the corrupt but invigorating power of Chaos. This infernal energy can be harnessed by the captive daemon to knit together its metallic skin and repair damaged systems so that it can continue to slaughter its foes. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving all daemon engines the 'Infernal Regeneration' ability, which heals the possessed machine at the beginning of each turn.
  • The regenerative capacities of Decimator daemon engines are infamous across the galaxy and it is said that these unholy creations can never be permanently destroyed as they can reform from even the most horrendous of damage. Previous editions of the rules represented this with the "Unholy Vigour" special rule that allowed the daemon engine a chance to ignore certain damage and will even allow it to return to battle after being destroyed. The 8th Edition rules meanwhile only give the Decimator the same "Infernal Regeneration" rule as other daemon engines.
• Horse of a Different Color: Some Daemon Engines, such as Helstalkers, are ridden into battle by powerful Chaos sorcerers and warlords.
• Master of None: An issue that's dogged the Defiler for several editions now is that it doesn't really serve any specific purpose. It has anti-tank, anti-infantry, melee and ranged weapons, but it can't compete with a specialist at any of those, and its point value has to reflect all of its component weapons, meaning that even when the edition rules let it split its fire to make the most of the guns it does have, Chaos players tend to favour more specialised choices where they're not paying for giant claws it likely won't use.
• Mechanical Monster:
  • The Lord of Skulls is a monstrosity more than twice as tall as a Helbrute, with a humanoid torso, head, and arms connected centaur-style to a gigantic tank-like body. Usually carrying a massive cleaver and sporting an arm-mounted cannon and a belly cannon, it is capable of fending off Titans and causing incredible carnage.
  • The Kytan Daemon Engine joins the humanoid parts of the Lord of Skulls to the legs of a Warhound Titan. This machine sacrifices firepower for manoeuvrability, as it trades its belly cannon for the ability to cover ground more easily and engage foes of similar stature in melee combat.
  • Maulerfiends and Forgefiends are powerful daemonic beast-machines that resemble a fusion of piston-driven war engine and monstrous lizard.
  • Heldrakes are monstrous mechanical dragons that have been mutated from Chaos fliers such as the Hell Talon or the Hellblade. Capable of operating in the depths of space as well as within a planet's atmosphere, these daemon engines cling to the underside of Chaos starships like giant metal bats and will often be amongst the first forces to engage the enemy during an invasion.
  • Helstalkers are essentially mechanical-looking giant insects, save for the disturbingly organic mouth.
• Siege Engines:
  • With the strength and agility to climb sheer walls, and short ranged weaponry powerful enough to melt through even the thickest fortress wall Maulerfiends make excellent siege weapons, capable of silencing any stronghold should they make it too their walls.
  • The Death Dealer daemon engine of Khorne is a mobile siege tower with a mechanical torso fitted to the front. The daemon engine is designed to disgorge hordes of fanatical warriors straight onto a fortresses walls while the daemon's robotic body uses it's deadly close combat weapons to slaughter the defenders.
  • The repulsive Plague Towers of Nurgle, originally from the Titan Legions version of the Epic-scale rules, are massive siege towers possessed by a Greater Daemon of the Plague God. Standing as tall as a Scout Titan, these huge machines of rotting wood and rusty metal are packed full of diseased followers of Nurgle that surge across maggot-ridden drawbridges to attack fortress walls and the upper levels of enemy held buildings.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Heldrakes, Daemon Engines born from the unholy fusion of Chaos Marine fighter jets and their pilots, resemble biomechanical dragons with segmented metal wings, scything iron talons and powerful flamers built into their jaws.
• Spider Tank: Defilers are large Daemon Engines that consist of a heavily armed and armoured turret sitting atop four scuttling mechanical legs and a pair of crab-like claws with which they tear their opponents apart in close combat.
• Tank-Tread Mecha:
  • The Khornate Daemon Engine known as the Lord of Skulls is a large war engine consisting of a robotic body mounted on a pair of crushing tracks that is possessed by one of the most powerful of the Blood God's daemonic servants. Worshiped and adored by the followers of Khorne, these brutal war machines mount numerous, powerful weapons and are intended to annihilate the enemy force. The Lord of Skull's larger predecessor, the Lord of Battles, and the daemonic siege tower known as the Death Dealer^note both from early editions of the Epic scape rules also share this basic design, only with wheels instead of tracks.
  • The original 1st Edition version of the Blood Slaughterer was a daemonically possessed robot that crossed the battlefield on a pair of solid iron-bound wheels. When the Blood Slaughterer was revamped for later editions by Forge World, these wheels were replaced with multiple scuttling legs.
• You Will Not Evade Me: The impaler wielded by some Blood Slaughterers is a massive daemonic harpoon attached to a length of chain that the daemon engine uses to ensure its victims cannot escape its fury. The 6th and 7th Edition rules for the impaler allowed the Blood Slaughterer to drag enemy models towards itself so that it can more easily engage them in close combat. The 8th Edition version of the rules however Inverts the trope as it allows the Blood Slaughterer to pull itself towards the target by giving a bonus to the daemon engine's charge roll.

Renegades & Heretics

More where that came from.

Fear not Chaos, for it is our salvation! Praise the sun that brings the dawn of our final doom, for is not destruction simply creation reversed in slow motion?

The Imperium... is not a happy place. It has been at war for the last ten thousand years, it has grown accustomed to think in apocalyptic terms: what is the value of life when faced with threat to their immortal souls? "We are at war for our very survival," goes another Imperial slogan, "No sacrifice is too great, no treachery too small." There are threats everywhere: cults fester in the hives, claiming dozens of planetary rulers in their membership; mutants and rogue psykers run for their lives from fanatical witchhunters; and humans in general hope for a better future.

As such, Chaos has no shortage of wretches for use as cannon fodder. The ranks of Chaos are vast: traitor regiments of Imperial Guard, renegade Admirals of the the Imperial Navy, jaded nobility forming cults for thrills, abhuman and mutant underclasses living in the ghettos of Imperial cities, slave soldiers raised in hell worlds, hordes of reanimated zombies, fallen clerics of the Ecclesiarchy, entire Xeno races fallen to Chaos, vast mobs of peasants desperate for food, freedom fighters and revolutionaries who do not truly understand the price of their new, dark allies... they are all now the damned.

Renegades & Heretics armies play similar to the Imperial Guard, and indeed feature traitorous guardsmen as troop choices, but lack the loyalists' volume of heavy weapons, armor, or even morale. To make up for this, mobs of low-cost mutants and other rabble can be used to soak up enemy fire or swamp troop formations, while other Chaos abominations can serve as assault troops. Overall, this makes them a gimped version of the Imperial Guard, but a characterful army nonetheless and a force of extreme (evil) underdogs.

Despite being one of the most common Chaos force encountered in the background, the army have rarely had their own official standalone rules for the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game with the army mostly being represented by regular Astra Militarum forces converted to count-as Traitor Guard. The 2nd Edition Codex: Chaos included an appendix army list for representing Chaos Cults in small games or as allies for Chaos Space Marines. The 3rd Edition Codex: Eye of Terror, released as a tie-in sourcebook for Games Workshop’s Eye of Terror Summer Worldwide Campaign included a Lost and the Damned army list that combined elements of the Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Daemons alongside mutants and Chaos beasts. From 4th Edition onwards, the force has been covered by Games Workshop’s Forge World department with the Imperial Armour: Siege of Varks books including Renegade Imperial Guard lists. The 8th Edition rules for the Forge World Traitor Guard are included in the Imperial Armour Index: Forces of the Astra Militarum book as the Renegades and Heretics Army. The 2018 Gaiden Game Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress included the first specifically sculpted plastic Traitor Guardsmen models with the 2019 supplement Blackstone Fortress: Traitor Command introducing a Traitor Commissar and Mutant Ogryn.

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Notable Renegades & Heretics tropes include:

• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Renegades & Heretics army consists of a disparate mixture of the worst members of humanity. Chaos cultists, corrupted Militarum Guardsmen, mutants, pirates, mercenaries and monsters will all fight under the banner of Chaos, united by nothing more than their hatred of the Imperium.
• Attack Animal:
  • Older versions of the army included Chaos Hounds, mutated and deformed hounds as large as a man that the were unleashed to run down fleeing enemies and stalk the flanks of the Traitor army.
  • The Renegades & Heretics version of the army includes Renegade Ogryn Beast Handlers who are accompanied by packs of Mauler Hounds. The Beast Handler goads these mutated hounds whose attacks are so ferocious, they cause Morale damage to any enemy they wound.
• Badass Army: While they are normally treated as Cannon Fodder whenever the Heretic Astartes are in command, some of the background material and novels do treat Chaos Cults and Traitor Astra Militarum regiments as serious threats that are just as capable as the best Astra Militarum regiments. Such Chaos forces are able to corrupt and conquer planets, with some even taking control of entire Sectors of Imperial space.
• Beast Folk: The 2nd Edition version of the army list, the Chaos Cult appendix list, included the abhuman Beastmen as an option, giving the force some solid infantry to fight alongside the hordes of cheap but weak cultists. In subsequent versions of the army, such troops are normally used as 'count-as' regular mutants or cultists.
• Blood Knight: Any Khorne unit with the "Covenant of Khorne" Keyword in the army. In particular, he is a popular patron for military units which go rogue and fall to Chaos, or armies raised from Chaos worlds, of which a Renegades & Heretics army is likely to be substantially in part.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Considering the penalties the Imperium holds for the heresy of consorting with the Ruinous Powers, let alone the danger of getting the Ruinous Powers' attention in the first place, and the well-publicized insanity and expendablity of the lower-down Chaos followers, it is understandable that some Chaos lords have difficulty recruiting willing followers. Hence, they resort to more forceful measures instead. Certain pieces of ritual sorcery and direct exposure to daemonic influence can have the habit of breaking the will of individuals, blasting their minds into awestruck simpletons highly suggestible to the whispers of the Warp. Cults will often try to arrange such sorcery to cause a substantial portion of the planet to rise up in Chaos' name even if they would not otherwise, and many Lost and the Damned armies are composed of such thralls.
• Body Horror: Due to the corrupting effects of Chaos, it is common for Mutants of various types to fight alongside Renegades & Traitors armies. Some of these Mutants were deformed before joining the army while others devolved after falling to Chaos. The 3rd Edition version of the army^note known as the Lost & the Damned actually received a kit to allow a player to create their own Mutant models that included plastic sprues from a number of different sources. The 8th Edition rules include the Renegade Mutant Rabble squad that represents the random nature of these creature's mutations with a random chance of increasing various characteristics at the start of the game.
• Cannon Fodder: Chaos is even more blatant about its treatment of its foot soldier rabble as this than the Imperium. In the fluff, Renegades and Traitors are by far the most common Chaos forces that the Imperial Guard actually fights, with Chaos Astartes and Daemons being far more dangerous but rarer.
• Cult: Any unit with the <Chaos Covenant> Keyword are devout members of a Cult dedicated to one of the Dark Gods of Chaos. In truth, the entire army list is an expansion of the Cultist choice available to Chaos Space Marines.
• Defeat Means Explosion: The mutated Plague Ogryns who accompany some Nurgle aligned Renegades & Heretics armies are known to burst in a shower of diseased bile when they are killed. The 8th Edition rules represent this by giving them a 50% chance of inflicting a mortal wound on any nearby non-Nurgle unit when they are slain.

• Evil Counterpart:
  • The Renegades & Heretics are a dark mirror to all the forces of the Imperium as a whole, with most of their forces being specifically evil versions of the Imperial Guard. They still use their old uniforms and equipment, but unlike the Guard fighting for the defense of the Imperium or reclaiming lost worlds, the Renegades are typically part of the invading forces threatening the integrity of the Imperium's worlds. Their relationship with the Chaos Marines is itself a dark inversion of the camaraderie between Loyalist Marines and Guardsmen, with Renegades serving as Cannon Fodder that the Traitor Legions throw at the Imperium's defenses to weaken them.
  • The Renegade Enforcers are Chaotic versions of the Commissars of the Officio Prefectus. Fanatical devotees to Chaos, it is the role of the Renegade Enforcer to keep the undisciplined and unreliable rank and file Renegades in line with lethal force, murdering multiple models to keep a squad in the fight if they fail a Morale test.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: One of the Troops choice from the 3rd Edition Lost & the Dammed list was a 'plague zombie horde' fielded in units of up to 50 making it possible to field up to 300 in a normal army. Given the right support they prove surprisingly effective.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Something many of these people should have remembered.
• Feel No Pain: Khorne's followers are too furious to notice, Nurgle's followers are too rotten and corrupt to notice, while Slaanesh's followers notice and enjoy it thoroughly.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Especially the Dark Vengeance cultists.
• Genre Blind: Considering the (well publicized) fact that Chaos uses human sacrifice for anything more complicated than boiling water, it's a wonder anybody is dumb enough to join them...which in turn gives you some idea of just how awful life in the Imperium can get.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Many members of a Renegades & Heretics army were not always evil and had no idea what they were getting into until it was far too late.
• Large and in Charge: A Chaos Space Marine Champion was one of the HQ Choices for the 3rd Edition version of the army while the 7th Edition Lost & the Damned Chaos Space Marine Formation consisted of a horde of Cultists led by a Dark Apostle.
• Loophole Abuse: The Imperial Cult is a surprisingly diverse religion with countless interpretations of the Emperor and His ideals. This is mainly due to the Imperium being so large that even the more eccentric interpretations of the Emperor are accepted if basic tenants are upheld; such tolerance is abused mercilessly by undercover Chaos cults to worm their way into society:
  • Slannesh cults may present "the God Emperor" as a higher being, "the perfect man" with far more excessive attention given to their attractiveness than usual.
  • Khorne cults may present "the God Emperor" as a mighty warrior, sat upon his Golden Throne with far more skulls than usually depicted.
  • Tzeentchian cults may present "the God Emperor" as the most powerful psyker to have ever existed, hoping to bring mankind into a new golden age via the use of knowledge and understanding, conveniently forgetting about his distaste for the arcane arts of course.
  • And as for Nurgle; you'd have a hard time arguing the God Emperor isn't a rotting corpse overseeing a slowly decaying Imperium, wouldn't you?
• Palette Swap: While there have been a small number of specific cultist and traitor guardsman models and rules released over the years, the most common way to represent Renegades & Heretics armies on the tabletop is to use the Astra Militarum rules and models, painted in an appropriately Chaotic colour scheme, often justified by saying that the army has only recently turned against the Imperium or was raised from an Imperial world fallen to Chaos. Some players will go the extra mile with suitable conversions to make their models really look the part.
• Private Military Contractors: The squads of Marauders who often fight alongside Renegade & Heretic armies are a mix of corrupted pirates and mercenaries who fight because they are being very well paid to do so rather than for the glory of the Dark Gods. To represent their status as more professional soldiers, the 8th Edition rules make Renegade Marauders one of the most reliable units in a Renegades & Heretics force, but they are the only infantry unit in the army that cannot be dedicated to one of the Chaos Gods.
• Psycho Serum: Many of the followers of Slaanesh in this army will be hopped up on some cocktail of combat and recreational drugs.
• Sinister Minister: Some cultists and renegade Astra Militarum regiments are unwittingly led into damnation by priests and ministers of the Imperial Cult who have been corrupted by the forces of Chaos. Once their corruption is revealed, these demagogues will drop all pretence of following the Imperial faith and lead their followers in rebellion, represented in some versions of the army list by various corrupt preacher HQ choices.

• Supernatural Fear Inducer: The Creeping Terror Psychic Power available to psykers in an 8th Edition Renegades & Heretics army installs an intense feeling of fear in an enemy unit making it more likely that they will run away.
• Villainous Underdog: Seriously outgunned by both their allies and the Imperium, the Lost and the Damned have only their numbers and their madness to aid them.
• Villainous Valor: Say what you will, but going up against a galaxy-spanning super-power, fighting for patrons who would just as soon use you as a Human Sacrifice, takes either quite a lot of guts... or quite a lot of insanity. Knowing Chaos, probably both.
• We Have Reserves: While there are some exceptions most heretical commanders, particularly those of the Heretic Astartes consider the cultists, renegade Guardsmen and mutants that make up Renegades & Heretics armies to be little more than Cannon Fodder, fit for little more than using up the ammunition of the enemy or as unwitting fuel for their profane rituals. As for the internal hierearchy, traitor Guardsmen and homegrown professionals from Chaos worshipping planets are obviously considered a cut above the dregs and cults and consider the latter to be expendable. In some past versions of the rules represented this with the "Master of the Horde" Demagogue who could replace dead Renegade Infantry platoons with new units as soon as the platoon was destroyed.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Nurglite Plague Zombies are a Troop choice in some versions of the army list. With the right build, you can have an almost entirely zombie army with which to swamp the opposition.

Khorne Daemonkin

"You sought to cower behind your walls, weakling? Instead, by the will of Khorne, you shall die behind them!"

— Reavax the Cruel, Lord of The Harvest

Khorne Daemonkin are fanatical devotees of the Blood God who worship Bloodthirsters, the Greater Daemons of Khorne, and their rampages are in the hopes of gaining enough favor with their patron god to summon a Bloodthirster to fight alongside them.

While Khornate hordes consisting of blood mad Heretic Astartes, cultists and Daemons have been mentioned in the background material for many years, it wasn’t until 7th Edition that they gained the title of Khorne Daemonkin and received their own codex sourcebook. Under the 8th Edition rules the Daemonkin return to being a Khorne aligned Chaos force chosen from Codex Heretic Astartes: Chaos Space Marines with Daemonic allies from the Index: Chaos sourcebook.

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• Anti-Magic: As well as the Brass Collars of Khorne that protect the Blood God's favoured followers and pets from witches and psykers, Daemonkin characters also have access to the Brazen Rune. This burning brand is an Artefact of Slaughter that not only protects its bearer but, when its full power is released, will burn out the mind of any psyker in the vicinity.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: As fanatical followers of the God of Blood and Rage, Khorne Daemonkin are renowned for their ceaseless assaults that drown their enemies with corpses. There are multiple pieces of background material that see the Daemonkin wiping themselves out by charging into the guns of their enemies.
• Demoted to Extra: While they are still mentioned a number of times in the background material, the in-game rules for Daemonkin armies weren't updated for 8th Edition of the game and players have to use the regular Khornate Heretic Astartes to represent them.
• Does Not Like Magic: Chaos Sorcerers are not permitted, as the Daemonkin's butchery and fervor are sufficient to get Khorne's notice.
• Blood Magic: The Daemonkin take this even further than regular Chaos forces, as the more blood that's shed in battle (even their own), the more favor they build with Khorne, which can give them boons, attract various daemons to fight alongside them, and even summon Bloodthirsters. In-game, the Daemonkin's Blood Tithe rule gives them Blood Tithe points when their units kill or are killed by enemy units. These points can then be spent to give them buffs, summon units of daemons, and even summon a Daemon Prince or a Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury.
• Hungry Weapon: The Artefact of Slaughter Goredrinker is a mighty axe that has a powerful Daemon bound within it that continuously hungers for the life essence of its victims.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: The Chaos version—the Daemonkin are a mix of cultists, Chaos Space Marines (especially Khorne Berserkers), and various Khornate daemons.

Questor Traitoris

Although extremely rare due to the loyalty indoctrinations of the Throne Mechanicum, it is not unheard of for individual Knights, Lances and sometimes entire Houses to fall under the sway of the Dark Gods. Known as Questor Traitoris, these Renegade Knights turn their awesome power against the Imperium they used to serve.

While Renegade Knights have been a part of the Warhammer 40,000 setting for many years, in the same way as their Imperial counterparts they were limited to the Epic game system. It wasn't until April 2016 and the release of the Imperial Knights: Renegade Gaiden Game that the first 40K scale Renegade Knight was released consisting of an Imperial Knight model with specific Chaos transfers along with rules and a conversion guide in White Dwarf. The 8th Edition rules for the Questor Traitoris were initially made available available as a free PDF download from the Warhammer Community website before the release of the full Codex: Chaos Knights in July 2019. Games Workshop's Forge World department produces Chaos Knight models with rules in the Imperial Armour Index: Forces of Chaos book.

Questor Traitoris follow many of the same tropes as their former Knights Questor colleagues detailed in their section here.

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• Abnormal Ammo: The weapons of some Infernal House Knights are infested by warp entities. Heavy stubbers are particularly prone to such possession, firing slugs that play host to minor daemonic creatures, and the Daemonic Ammunition Stratagem from the 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights book boosts the Strength of these warped weapons to represent their profane ammunition.
• Anti-Magic: The warp-interference, known as the Glamour of Slaanesh, that surrounds the Daemon Knights of Slaanesh in the 2nd Edition of the Epic game system gives them a 50% chance of ignoring enemy psychic abilities.
• Armless Biped: Unlike many of their fellows, the Hell-Scourge and Hell-Knight Daemon Knights of Slaanesh from the Epic game system lack any arms, mounting their primary weapon systems on top of their hull instead.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Some Dreadblade Knights have been driven mad by the powers of the power of the warp. Consumed by an unquenchable rage these Knights charge eternally forwards without a thought for ranged combat, the 8th Edition Warp-Rage Dreadblade Damnation reducing their Ballistic Skill and making it impossible for them to Fall Back.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: In an attempt to create more Renegade Knights, Warpsmith covens have taken to capturing and torturing lone Knights, especially Freeblades, and torturing them until they either die or turn to Chaos.
• The Berserker: Knights Rampager are Chaos Knights that have lost themselves to fury and bloodlust. Desiring nothing more than to tear apart anything and everything within reach of their vicious close combat weaponry, many Knights Rampager have to be physically restrained between battles so that they don’t slaughter their fellow Chaos worshippers. The 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights gives these berserk war machines the Frenzied Rampage ability that gives them a chance of causing additional hits against their close combat opponents as they give in to their fury.
• Haunted Technology:
  • Due to the difficulty of turning a Knight’s pilot, some Warpsmiths have to resort to replacing them with a daemon bound to the Knight suit, turning the Knight into a powerful Daemon Engine.
  • Since the end of the Horus Heresy, many members of the depraved House Devine have physically died and had their souls bound to their Knight suit so that they can continue to fight for the Prince of Pleasure.
• Homing Projectile: The shieldbreaker missiles of Knights Tyrant often play host to daemonic entities that seek out their prey. The Daemonic Guidance System Stratagem^note from the 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights book allows such possessed missiles to be fired at enemies outside of the Knight's line of sight.
• Hungry Weapon: The reaper chainsword known as the Teeth That Hunger^note introduced by the 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights is a profane weapon that continually hungers for souls. This hunger is so great that, should the weapon be denied sustenance, it will attempt to devour the soul of the pilot that wields it, giving it a chance of doing a mortal wound against the Knight in the process.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: The Epic Daemon Knights of Slaanesh are far more graceful, agile and quicker than their Imperial counterparts being more akin to the Wraithknights and Titans used by the Aeldari.
• Life Drain: Knights of the Infernal Households are often blessed with the ability to repair themselves when anointed with the blood of the enemy. The Bind the Souls of the Defeated Stratagem from the 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights allows gives these Knights the chance to recover lost wounds whenever it slays an enemy during the Fight phase.
• Mental Fusion: Hell-Scourge Daemon Knights of Slaanesh share a telepathic link that allows them to carry out exceedingly well co-ordinated assaults. This link encompasses every Hell-Scourge operating in a battle zone with some scholars believing that it may spread to every such Daemon Knight in existence. This was represented in the Titan Legions edition of the Epic scale game system by allowing Hell-Scourges to double their squad coherency distance.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: The feudal beliefs enforced on Knights by their Thrones Mechanicum meant that, during the Horus Heresy, many of the highly honourable Houses sided with Horus and the traitors due to their existing oaths of loyalty. The doubts, conflicting loyalty and corrupting nature of Chaos, eventually led to these Knights becoming just as insane and depraved as their masters.
• Scarred Equipment: The Renegade Knight known as Litany of Destruction^note the antagonist of the Imperial Knights: Renegade Gaiden Game is identifiable by its heavily damaged faceplate that it has sported since turning against the Imperium.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer:
  • The Traitor's Mark,^note introduced during 8th Edition is a profane icon that projects gruesome visions in the minds of all those who view it, reducing the Leadership characteristic of enemy units as they are filled with utter terror.
  • Some Chaos Knight lords are so blessed by the Dark Gods that they are surrounded by wisps of warp-energy that instils fear in all those it touches. The 8th Edition Codex: Chaos Knights represents this with the Aura of Terror Warlord trait that makes it more likely that enemy units will fail their Morale test when they get close to the Knight.

Other

• Raising the Steaks: Any species with psychic abilities can be tainted by the Warp, including animals.
• Rogue Trader gives a rare example of an entire Eldar Craftworld consumed by Chaos: Lu'Nasad. Three "Aspect Shells" were formed from ruined Aspect Shrines, spitting out undead Dire Avengers, Warp Spiders, and Wraithguard. Another Craftworld is Kher-Ys, whose Avatar was corrupted by Slaanesh.

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Cast down the idols! Destroy the temples! Slay the priests! Show these fools that they worship nothing more than a rotting corpse!

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